Integrated xylooligosaccharides production from imidazole-treated sugarcane bagasse with application of in house produced enzymes

The application of biorefinery concepts to produce different value-added biomolecules such as xylooligo-saccharides (XOs) generates economical competitive, sustainable and environmentally friendly processes. The objective of this work was to develop an efficient imidazole-pretreatment process of sugarcane bagasse (SB) and the use of the obtained hemicellulose fraction in the production of XOs with the application of in house produced xylanolytic enzymes using SB as substrate, under a biorefinery approach. SB imidazole pretreatment allowed the recovery of a hemicellulose rich fraction (34%) with 91.2% of delignification. Xylanase production by Aspergillus niger reached 53.1 U center dot mL(-1) at 120 h. The application of produced xylanases in the enzymatic hydrolysis of extracted xylan, allowed the production of 6.06 g center dot L-1 of XOs, where xylotriose represented > 70%. Great per-spectives are viewed for the implementation of mixed processes in a sustainable closed cycle to produce bio-molecules with concomitant valorization of subproducts from SB chain.

Automated summary

This study developed an efficient pretreatment process to obtain a hemicellulose-rich fraction from sugarcane bagasse and used this fraction to produce xylooligosaccharides (XOs). By using in-house produced xylanolytic enzymes in the enzymatic hydrolysis process, XOs were successfully produced.